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Swedish-Finnish telecom operator TeliaSonera, and Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson, have announced that Stockholm and Tallinn in Estonia will be the first cities to have new wireless mobile technology, 5G, rolled out in 2018.

Johan Dennelind, CEO of TeliaSonera, said in a statement, "Stockholm and Tallinn are two of the most connected cities in the world and now we’ll take them to the next level. 5G will create completely new innovations, ecosystems and great services to our customers. 5G will also take the Internet of Things (IoT) to a new level."

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson, added: "More and more industries tap into the value of digitalisation and connectivity. 5G will amplify that as it is designed to be the industrial internet. It will not only be built for consumers, but also for digitalisation of industries and the IoT."

"Together with TeliaSonera we launched the first commercial 4G network in 2009, and we will be in the forefront of 5G as well."

Mats Svärdh, TeliaSonera's vice president of network and IT infrastructure, told Swedish public broadcaster, Swedish Radio, that the launch of 5G in 2018 will mostly benefit the high-tech industry at first, but adds that customers will probably see many new services and applications as a result.

"This could be things like self-driving cars or robots working in mines. These things require a very low latency, which the current infrastructure cannot deliver," says Svärdh.

The new technology will also mean much higher bandwidth for people who live in the countryside, according to Svärdh, adding that it may take a while until everything is in place for a nationwide launch.

"Our best guess is that we will have everything ready by 2020. In two years we will see a set of services that are not possible today, but we will probably not be able to offer everything that 5G can offer by then," Svärdh said.

Sweden has long been a pioneer high technology nation and, among EU member states, it's the leading country for innovation. Sweden is also one of Europe’s top three spenders on research and development.

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